If you are looking to get into the super nice sps a lot of it has to do with
a) your ability to keep pieces well coloured
b) having an eye to see beyond what the pieces is now and seeing what it can color up to be assuming of course you have the appropriate mad skills for part a
Here is a good example.
Now the first pic here is a plana we have already had for a bit. But when these first come in the are pretty much entierly white with the slightest hints of green. Sometimes the tips have some purple. sometimes the tips are solid brown. This piece came in, solid brown but the tip now have some purple in them.
This piece arrived on the same order but had much better color on arrival so its been coloring up for the same amount of time, but started better so its looking much better right now. Base have more green, tips are much more purple/blue.
Now this piece is one we have had for a while. This is one that was a "left over" that did now sell, so we just added to our collection and put it to the side to color up for a bit.
Crazy vibrant tips, crazy vibrant base.
I used the same developing specs for all these pics. Basically set the white ballance on the first pic, cropped it and applied the same config to the other pics.
So from the first pic to the last you can see a major difference in both the base color and the color in the tip of the plana. If you find the first piece at that coloration at a store, you could probably expect to pay 1/2 the price compared to the same piece at max coloration.
Here is another piece for you.
This piece always comes in poo brown. We set this one to the side to see what we could do with it.
All these pics are from the same colony. its just starting to color up, so we anticipate amazing color across the whole pieces, but its not there yet.
This is a branch in the center of the colony and what the whole piece looked like on import:
Pretty freakin boring.....
Here is some of the coloration we are starting to get on some of the outer tips
And now we can see the potential in the piece
